RALEIGH, N.C. — In less than two years, U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn went from a little-known 24-year-old candidate to a Republican congressman with access to former President Donald Trump.
Now at 26, Cawthorn has positioned himself as a bit of a kingmaker. He made that clear earlier this month, when he and Trump met with two potential candidates for Congress seeking endorsements and he brought a list of the Republicans who have Cawthorn’s seal of approval to represent most of North Carolina’s 14 districts.
“Congressman Cawthorn appreciates any opportunity he has to speak with the President about the future of our party,” said Luke Ball, Cawthorn’s spokesman, in a written statement. “President Donald J. Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, and the future is America First.”
McClatchy sent Cawthorn’s campaign 13 questions about his plan, endorsements and the meeting with Trump. Ball answered three focused on who he would endorse.
All of Cawthorn’s maneuvering could be for naught after the courts delayed North Carolina’s primary by two months to give judges time to consider whether some of those districts could be gerrymandered. It is possible that the courts order all of the state’s congressional districts be redrawn.
Ball said Cawthorn’s campaign is waiting to see what the courts decide and will dole out support from there.
“It’s a bit unusual,” Sunshine Hillygus, a political science professor at Duke University, said of Cawthorn’s approach, “but everything about Trump is unusual.”
Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, said he’s never seen anything like this.
“It’s even more extraordinary that it’s from a freshman member of Congress,” Cooper said. “It says he has an ego, but it also says he has access to President Trump, the de facto leader of the Republican Party.”
By Trump’s side at Mar-a-Lago
Cawthorn made sure his constituents knew on Dec. 4 that he was at Mar-a-Lago, the 126-room mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, that houses a club, resort and Trump’s home.
He tweeted a video following a Turning Point Action event at Mar-a-Lago. The nonprofit, led by Charlie Kirk, advocates for conservative values at high schools and colleges.
Cawthorn let his followers know he sat next to both Trump and Kirk.
“He had very choice words for these TV generals — these people who go and run their mouths: ‘Make sure you elect real patriots.’” Cawthorn said on video, seemingly quoting Trump.
None of this is a surprise to Cawthorn’s followers. He’s been photographed sitting beside, across from and near Trump throughout his freshman year in Congress.
It was what Cawthorn didn’t tell his constituents in the video that caught people by surprise.
2022 election endorsements
Cawthorn didn’t just go to Mar-a-Lago that Saturday to attend an event. He was also there to sort out some potential issues with North Carolina’s 2022 elections.
Jack Minor, former chief of staff for Mark Walker, told The News & Observer that same day that he, too, was at Mar-a-Lago with Cawthorn and Walker, a former Republican congressman.
He said they were waiting to talk with Trump about whether the former president would endorse Walker if he left North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race and switched to a run for House.
Walker, a three-term congressman, chose to step away from his position in 2020 after state lawmakers redrew the congressional districts, at the direction of the courts, and turned his district blue. Walker said then that the move allowed him to focus on a run for U.S. Senate.
But Trump blindsided Walker in June when he announced in front of a room full of people at the state’s GOP convention that he would instead endorse one of Walker’s Senate opponents, U.S. Rep. Ted Budd.
Since the endorsement Budd and former Gov. Pat McCrory have led Walker in polls, often with McCrory coming out ahead.
Political experts said if Walker would pull himself from the race, his supporters might lean toward Budd and give him an advantage.
At Mar-a-Lago, Cawthorn attended a meeting with Walker, 7th Congressional District candidate Bo Hines, Trump and Club for Growth President David McIntosh to discuss that possibility.
The Club for Growth
McIntosh’s presence in the room says a lot about what a potential Trump endorsement could mean for Walker and Hines.
Club for Growth is a conservative nonprofit founded in 1999 and focused on economic policy issues and cutting taxes. In the 2018 and 2020 elections, Club for Growth spent $20 million alone on Republican candidates who tried to overturn the election, The Guardian reported.
The organization didn’t turn its attention to North Carolina until the 2016 election when it supported Budd for Congress and also fought, unrelated to Budd, for the defeat of former U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers.
Since then the group has also supported U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, former Eastern North Carolina congressional candidate Celeste Cairns and now Cawthorn and Hines, who it lists as two of its endorsed candidates in the 2022 midterm elections.
It plans to spend more than $10 million on Budd’s campaign and is running multiple attack ads against McCrory.
The latest ad, “Biden loves McCrory,” labels McCrory “a Trump-hater” and “liberal faker.” The ad pulls soundbites from McCrory’s radio show on WBT in Charlotte edited to sound critical of the former president.
“No wonder Biden loves McCrory,” a woman’s voiceover says as a video of Biden and McCrory hugging plays.
The organization also sent out multi-page mailers across North Carolina with headlines and quotes from newspaper articles that were critical of McCrory when he was in office. It links to a website that lists a long line of ethics questions about the former governor.
Cawthorn’s plan
The News & Observer obtained a copy of Cawthorn’s map, labeled “Congressman Cawthorn’s plan for North Carolina” and showing the names and pictures of candidates. Included were the photos of six incumbents: Greg Murphy, David Rouzer, Dan Bishop, Richard Hudson, Virginia Foxx and Patrick McHenry.
And of course, Cawthorn’s face was there too.
He would be moving to the 13th Congressional District just west of Charlotte — the one he surprised everyone by choosing last month because he said he thought that without him the constituents there would pick a “go-along-to-get-along” Republican.
He didn’t say that that candidate was House Speaker Tim Moore, but mapmakers had seemingly created the 13th district with Moore in mind. Moore announced hours after Cawthorn’s statement that he would seek reelection as speaker.
Cawthorn’s map also included two others. The first is Trump supporter Sandy Smith for the 2nd Congressional District. Smith attended the rally in Washington on Jan. 6 that preceded the attack on the Capitol.
In the 14th Congressional District in the mountains, where Cawthorn was once expected to run, the map shows Michele Woodhouse, a GOP district chairwoman.
Woodhouse’s actions are being reviewed by the state GOP after other candidates said that she used her position as district chairwoman to hurt their campaigns, The Charlotte Observer reported.
Cooper said Woodhouse stands to lose the most by Cawthorn’s plan becoming public and thinks “party elites” will not be happy.
“If you’re an established Republican and you’ve been working for years, if not decades, in pursuit of building a party, it’s going to rub you the wrong way to see a freshman member of Congress try to play kingmaker,” Cooper said.
He added that being part of Cawthorn’s plan probably won’t hurt people like McHenry, Foxx or other established Republicans.
“I don’t think it’s going to matter,” Cooper said. “But for Bo Hines or Michele Woodhouse or Sandy Smith: I think this could backfire and I think for Michele Woodhouse, she is the most likely for it to backfire.”
Cooper said it didn’t sit well with the voters in Western North Carolina when former Rep. Mark Meadows came up with his own plan to handpick his wife’s best friend as his successor. They instead voted for Cawthorn as their congressman.
“They say history doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme,” Cooper said. “But I think this is history repeating itself.”
Mark Walker
Two candidates’ faces appeared on Cawthorn’s plan with arrows pointing to races they’re not currently running in: Walker and Hines.
Cawthorn had already thrown his name behind both candidates — Walker for Senate and Hines for House.
But realizing his chances of winning were waning, Walker’s team began eyeing a run in the 7th Congressional District that runs from his home county of Guilford to southwest Wake County.
Minor acknowledged this in late November while the campaign was still focused on a Senate run.
“Look, Walker would be crazy not to consider the fact that there is a House seat now, where nearly three-fourths of the constituents there he has served in the U.S. House previously,” Minor told The N&O in late November. “For him — his personal decision — it comes down to where he thinks he can do the most good and service for people.”
In a video Walker posted to social media accounts on Tuesday, he admits that the odds are against him and on paper it makes more sense for him to look at a House race.
North Carolina Rep. Jon Hardister, too, considered running in the 7th district, but as rumors began circulating about Walker’s potential entry into the race, Hardister announced he would seek reelection.
Bo Hines
Hines, 25, of Winston-Salem, has already set himself up as a big-name candidate, despite having no political experience on his resume.
He grew up in Charlotte. His father made a career in licensing apparel working closely with NASCAR.
Hines was a football player at N.C. State but transferred to Yale University to study political science.
When Hines announced his campaign in early 2021, he was immediately compared to Cawthorn, who Hines said shared similar values.
At the time, Cawthorn was running for the 5th Congressional District against U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, an establishment Republican embraced by her party.
Hines has since changed his mind repeatedly on what district he should run in.
He settled on the 7th.
But now he is in Walker’s way.
Which means he is in Trump’s way.
With Walker in the Senate race, Budd doesn’t have a clear path to victory.
So Trump, McIntosh, Hines, Cawthorn and Walker made a plan: Walker would move to the 7th, Hines would move to the 4th Congressional District that includes Cumberland and Johnston counties, and Trump would give Walker his endorsement.
Neither Walker nor Hines live in the 4th or 7th districts, but federal law doesn’t require that.
Walker has been offered the endorsement, Minor told McClatchy, on Dec. 6. “I would say he has not made a final decision on what he will do but he does expect an endorsement to transition over.”
Minor said the Walker campaign understood the endorsement would come around midweek.
Questions about Cawthorn’s plan
Cooper said Cawthorn’s maneuvering is unprecedented and that freshmen often don’t possess or have access to power.
“Madison Cawthorn has by virtue of his singular pursuit of power — and Donald Trump’s lack of respect for party norms — found a way to influence the Republican Party and in a way that I don’t think anybody saw coming before,” Cooper said.
Hillygus said the meeting benefited both. She said Cawthorn’s devotion to Trump is part of his branding, and Trump is looking to piggyback off people to maintain influence in Washington and North Carolina, one of several states that could allow Republicans to take back the House.
She added that the map includes candidates who have long aligned themselves with Trump, but it doesn’t match up with the way North Carolina residents cast votes in a state that is considered nearly purple.
Hillygus said that Cawthorn hoped to get a reaction with his map because it makes for headlines.
The plan uses Cawthorn’s and several of his colleagues’ official congressional photos and his congressional seal.
The House Ethics Manual says using a congressional seal to give a false impression of sponsorship or approval by the government violates the federal criminal code.
Asher Hildebrand, a Duke University public policy professor, tweeted his reaction saying, “Far from the most galling aspect of this, but in addition to the sheer arrogance @RepCawthorn appears to have broken the law too.” He directed his tweet to the Office of Congressional Ethics’ Twitter account.
North Carolina Supreme Court
After the weekend meeting, a series of court rulings culminated in an order from the state Supreme Court stopping candidate filing and moving North Carolina’s primaries to May 17 to allow the courts time to decide the gerrymandering cases challenging the maps.
As the election landscape shifted, Trump stayed quiet. Walker never got his endorsement, at least publicly, and he never made a decision on where to run.
Cawthorn’s spokesman, Ball, said like everyone else, Cawthorn is waiting to see what happens in the courts and from there he will clarify who he endorses.
He told The Associated Press that decision would come after the holidays and in the meantime he would continue focusing on the Senate. On Wednesday afternoon, he put out a campy video saying as much.
Walker said he’s appreciative of the offer of endorsements, and his wife, Kelly, said political elites have been attacking her husband for not playing by “establishment rules.” She said regardless of where he runs, he needs to return to Washington.
Referring back to his 2014 win for House, he said: “We still believe that hardworking individuals can win against the political class without being bought by political insiders,” he said.
———
